1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for, and a method of, isolating problems, and particularly, to an apparatus for, and a method of, isolating hardware and power source problems occurring in, for example, a portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
The sizes of IC elements are being reduced and the integration and performance of LSIs and CPUs are improving. These factors are enlarging the markets for personal-computer communications, the Internet, and portable terminals such as cellular phones, notebook computers, handy terminals, and mobile computers.
The portable terminals are easy to carry and are usable anywhere. They are, therefore, frequently manipulated by unskilled persons in, for example, supermarkets, to manage inventories.
The unskilled persons sometimes carry out irregular operations such as removing batteries from active terminals to destroy data and programs stored in the terminals. The terminals themselves sometimes have hardware problems and malfunction under specific conditions and, in particular, when they are new products.
When a problem occurs in a terminal, it is very difficult for the operator to correctly report conditions that caused the problem, and it takes a long time and much labor to discover the cause of the problem. To cope with this, a prior art keeps a log of software execution. Whenever a problem occurs, the log is checked to locate the point or subroutine in a program that caused the problem.
If the operator of a terminal makes an irregular operation such as removing batteries from the terminal while a main memory of the terminal is executing a program, data in the memory will be destroyed and a log therein disappears at once. Namely, the prior art's logging function is useless in such a case.
Except for the software logging function, the prior art has no means to directly record the operations of the power source and other hardware parts of the terminal. The prior art needs, therefore, a long time and much labor to isolate problems relating to the power source, hardware, and irregular operations of the terminal from bugs in the software of the terminal. This is the reason why there is a strong demand from hardware designers and maintenance personnel for an apparatus for, and a method of, isolating hardware and power source problems.